System Memory Upgrade

Hello there! Not sure if this is the right place for this post, but here goes.

I have been running OMV 3 on my HP Microserver Gen8 just fine for a while. I am now looking to upgrade the system memory and just wondered if anyone has had experience of this? Procedures, potential problems, etc.

RE:

Well , i`ll tell u over two month when i get mem.By logic should not make any problems unless u buy wrong mem modul or mem is defect
A bit silly question!

Not a silly question at all, but definitely a silly answer! Of course I will buy the correct memory, that's a given. However, as OMV is Linux based, you have to wonder about memory management... Often you change swap space size after adding Ram i.e it is not always dynamic... So the question is not about how to upgrade my hardware, but about how OMV handles memory and if there would be any potential problems?

Well if you really want to be technical, Linux manages swapping using the Least Recently Used algorithm. The OMV installer automatically creates a swap partition that is two times the amount of RAM that your system has. From what I understand, this is a tradition that goes back to the days when computers had very little RAM which made sense at the time, but it's not really very sensible anymore, so you do not have to worry about resizing your swap partition. Depending on how much RAM your system has, you may actually be able to completely get rid of the swap partition.

RE:

Well if you really want to be technical, Linux manages swapping using the Least Recently Used algorithm. The OMV installer automatically creates a swap partition that is two times the amount of RAM that your system has. From what I understand, this is a tradition that goes back to the days when computers had very little RAM which made sense at the time, but it's not really very sensible anymore, so you do not have to worry about resizing your swap partition. Depending on how much RAM your system has, you may actually be able to completely get rid of the swap partition.

Thanks Dave B, I think you totally understand what I'm getting at! Point is, not to make any assumptions! does OMV use legacy algorithms? Are there any issues when upgrading Ram?

Depending on how much RAM your system has, you may actually be able to completely get rid of the swap partition.

Well, this is very interesting !

Does that "rid of swap" happens automatic by Os(OMV) or manualy/by hand ?
And if is in case of automatic, how much mem is needed to get that to happend theoretical of maximum of supported by motherboard?

In JohnR and my case HPE Gen8 supports max 16gb ram.

On another side what user ajaja where talking is very very true a specialy about used-using ram in daily use!

RE:

But on another hand "the swap" is on my ssd(5th port)....so it`s not so catastrophy.
Unless u are going to do some heavy job`s with HPE ?

Think you're missing the point. Doesn't matter where the swap space is allocated, but how it is managed.. That aside, if you slam some extra memory into your system, OMV will probably still work. But will it be making efficient use of said memory? I.e.what is the point of spending money on a hardware upgrade if you're not going to use it properly? Complaining about the inefficiency of your system when it's your fault! Hence my question on the best way to perform such an upgrade!

Well if you really want to be technical, Linux manages swapping using the Least Recently Used algorithm. The OMV installer automatically creates a swap partition that is two times the amount of RAM that your system has. From what I understand, this is a tradition that goes back to the days when computers had very little RAM which made sense at the time, but it's not really very sensible anymore, so you do not have to worry about resizing your swap partition. Depending on how much RAM your system has, you may actually be able to completely get rid of the swap partition.

Thanks Dave B, I think you totally understand what I'm getting at! Point is, not to make any assumptions! does OMV use legacy algorithms? Are there any issues when upgrading Ram?
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OMV 3 uses Debian 9, which in turn uses the Linux kernel (version 4.9 according to WikiPedia) for memory management, so no. I did not have any issues when I upgraded RAM in my machine, and there's really no reason you should.

Depending on how much RAM your system has, you may actually be able to completely get rid of the swap partition.

Well, this is very interesting !
Does that "rid of swap" happens automatic by Os(OMV) or manualy/by hand ?
And if is in case of automatic, how much mem is needed to get that to happend theoretical of maximum of supported by motherboard?

In JohnR and my case HPE Gen8 supports max 16gb ram.

On another side what user ajaja where talking is very very true a specialy about used-using ram in daily use!

No, OMV does not remove the swap partition automatically. You would have to do it yourself manually. It's possible to do it through the terminal, but I prefer to use GParted Live. I am not saying that you must remove the partition. I am saying that if you have enough memory and you are sure you are not going to exceed it, you can remove the partition and get the space that was reserved for it back. If you are not sure if you'll need it, don't do it. If you remove it and you do need it, the Linux kernel will start killing processes with a lower priority, and you do not want that.

So a couple of points here. 1) If "The OMV installer automatically creates a swap partition that is two times the amount of RAM that your system has", then logically you would want to change said swap partition to match your memory upgrade. And yes, very much an age old Lunux thing (other *nix systems are different). 2) "Depending on how much RAM your system has, you may actually be able to completely get rid of the swap partition" Not sure about this. One of the reasons's I'm looking to upgrade RAM is to fix a problem I had running VMs under the Virtual Box pligin i.e. lack of resources. For example, I upgraded an Ubuntu VM and the kernel crashed! Errors suggested said lack of resource In my experience, swap space is always required, especially when pushing your system a little! Bottom line, all *nix configs are different, but what is the OMV way?

The OMV installer does not always create a swap partition that is twice the size of RAM.

On my original OMV 2.x install onto a 16GB SSD in a box with 16GB of RAM, the resulting swap partition was 4GB. I immediately commented out swap in fstab and rebooted.

After about a month running this way without any problems, I deleted the swap partition, grew the primary partition to fill the disk, and expanded the filesystem to consume the entire rootfs partition.

RE:

The OMV installer does not always create a swap partition that is twice the size of RAM.

On my original OMV 2.x install onto a 16GB SSD in a box with 16GB of RAM, the resulting swap partition was 4GB. I immediately commented out swap in fstab and rebooted.

After about a month running this way without any problems, I deleted the swap partition, grew the primary partition to fill the disk, and expanded the filesystem to consume the entire rootfs partition.

An interesting scenario where SSD = RAM Makes you wonder what algorithm the installer uses? Which goes back to my point... What is the recommended memory management setup for OMV? Interestingly, just seem a 1TB SSD for around £200! Seems quite a good price to me :-/